Still Life: Chief Inspector Gamache, Book 1

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

A Great Reckoning: A Novel

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must. And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.

The Trespasser: A Novel

Being on the murder squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she's there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she's getting close to the breaking point. Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers' quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed to a shine, and dead in her catalogue-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner.

The Moth Catcher: A Vera Stanhope Mystery

Life seems perfect in the quiet community of Valley Farm. Then a shocking discovery shatters the silence. The owners of a big country house have employed a house sitter, a young ecologist, to look after the place while they're away. But his dead body is found by the side of the lane - a lonely place to die. When DI Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene, she finds the body of a second man. What the two victims seem to have in common is a fascination with studying moths - and with catching these beautiful, intriguing creatures.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye: A Harry Bosch Novel, Book 21

Harry Bosch is California's newest private investigator. He doesn't advertise, he doesn't have an office, and he's picky about who he works for, but it doesn't matter. His chops from 30 years with the LAPD speak for themselves. Soon one of Southern California's biggest moguls comes calling. The reclusive billionaire has less than six months to live and a lifetime of regrets. He hires Bosch to find out whether he has an heir.

In the Woods

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery.

Silent Voices: A Vera Stanhope Mystery

When Inspector Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if, for once in her life, she's uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals bruises around the victim's throat, and Vera quickly realizes she has a murder on her hands.

Dark Water: Detective Erika Foster, Book 3

When Detective Erika Foster receives a tip-off that key evidence for a major narcotics case was stashed in a disused quarry on the outskirts of London, she orders for it to be searched. From the thick sludge the drugs are recovered, but so is the skeleton of a young child. The remains are quickly identified as seven-year-old Jessica Collins. The missing girl who made headline news 26 years ago.

tmitch says:"i really love this series!! i have listened to all three books. i hope there is another one soon."

Bruno, Chief of Police

Bruno is a former soldier who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life - living in his restored shepherd's cottage; patronizing the weekly market; sparring with, and basically ignoring, the European Union bureaucrats from Brussels. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it. But then the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army changes everything and galvanizes Bruno's attention.

The Last Detective: An Inspector Peter Diamond Investigation

Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: a genuine gumshoe, committed to door-stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry. So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no one willing to identify her, no marks, and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit.

Escape Clause: A Virgil Flowers Novel, Book 9

The first storm comes from, of all places, the Minnesota zoo. Two large and very rare Amur tigers have vanished from their cage, and authorities are worried sick that they've been stolen for their body parts. Traditional Chinese medicine prizes those parts for home remedies, and people will do extreme things to get what they need. Some of them are a great deal more extreme than others - as Virgil is about to find out.

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd: A Flavia de Luce Novel, Book 8

In spite of being ejected from Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, 12-year-old Flavia de Luce is excited to be sailing home to England. But instead of a joyous homecoming, she is greeted on the docks with unfortunate news: Her father has fallen ill, and a hospital visit will have to wait while he rests. But with Flavia's blasted sisters and insufferable cousin underfoot, Buckshaw now seems both too empty - and not empty enough.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

It is the summer of 1950 and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw.

The Obsidian Chamber

After a harrowing otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachussetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive - only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown....

A Tapping at My Door

From the best-selling author of Cry Baby, the beginning of a brilliant and gripping police procedural series set in Liverpool, perfect for fans of Peter James and Mark Billingham. A woman at home in Liverpool is disturbed by a persistent tapping at her back door. She's disturbed to discover the culprit is a raven and tries to shoo it away. Which is when the killer strikes. DS Nathan Cody, still bearing the scars of an undercover mission that went horrifyingly wrong, is put on the case.

Blood Lines: Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Series, Book 5

A victim killed with a single, precise stab to the heart appears at first glance to be a robbery gone wrong. A caring, upstanding social worker lost to a senseless act of violence. But for Detective Kim Stone, something doesn't add up. When a local drug addict is found murdered with an identical wound, Kim knows instinctively that she is dealing with the same killer. But with nothing to link the two victims except the cold, calculated nature of their death, this could be her most difficult case yet.

A Test of Wills

Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after years fighting in the First World War. Unknown to his colleagues he is still suffering from shell shock, and is burdened with the guilt of having had executed a young soldier on the battlefield for refusing to fight. A jealous colleague has learned of his secret and has managed to have Rutledge assigned to a difficult case which could spell disaster for Rutledge whatever the outcome. A retired officer has been murdered, and Rutledge goes to investigate.

Commonwealth

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

Dry Bones

What happened to Jacques Gaillard? The brilliant teacher at the École Nationale d’Administration, who trained some of France’s best and brightest as future prime ministers and presidents, vanished ten years ago, presumably from Paris. This ten-year-old mystery inspires a bet—one that Enzo Macleod, a biologist teaching in Toulouse, France, instead of pursuing a brilliant career in forensics back home in Scotland, can ill afford to lose.

Silence for the Dead

In 1919 Kitty Weekes - pretty, resourceful, and on the run – falsifies her background to obtain a nursing position at Portis House, a remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. Hiding the shame of their mental instability in what was once a magnificent private estate, the patients suffer from nervous attacks and tormenting dreams. But something more is going on at Portis House - its plaster is crumbling; its plumbing makes eerie noises; and strange, cold breaths of air waft through the empty rooms.

The Nix: A Novel

It's 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson - college professor, stalled writer - has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn't seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she's reappeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the Internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high school sweetheart.

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.

Manitou Canyon: Cork O'Connor Mystery Series

Since the violent deaths of his wife, father, and best friend all occurred in previous Novembers, Cork O'Connor has always considered it to be the cruelest of months. Yet his daughter has chosen this dismal time of year in which to marry, and Cork is understandably uneasy. His concern comes to a head when a man camping in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness goes missing. As the official search ends with no recovery in sight, Cork is asked by the man's family to stay on the case.

The Whistler

Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined.

Publisher's Summary

Audie Award Nominee, Mystery, 2013

The brilliant new novel in the New York Times best-selling series by Louise Penny, one of the most acclaimed crime writers of our time

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.”

But when the renowned choir director is murdered, the lock on the monastery’s massive wooden door is drawn back to admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec. There they discover disquiet beneath the silence, discord in the apparent harmony. One of the brothers, in this life of prayer and contemplation, has been contemplating murder. As the peace of the monastery crumbles, Gamache is forced to confront some of his own demons, as well as those roaming the remote corridors. Before finding the killer, before restoring peace, the Chief must first consider the divine, the human, and the cracks in between.

Louise Penny has written a tale with all my favorite things - fascinating historical context, complex, emotional characters, and a good story. The cloistered monastery setting is wonderfully detailed, and each monk has a clear, vivid character (even the minor ones). The twists of the story, whether humorous little details or fast-paced dramatic actions, prevented me from putting it down. The murder mystery was a wonderful tale, with an interesting resolution and a strangely hopeful twist at the end.

The parallell story, among the regular characters, will be interesting to new readers, and almost overwhelming for those of us who follow the series. I noticed in her previous book, "Bury Your Dead," that Penny has a gift for imagining the most heart-breaking thing that could happen to Inspector Gamache, and making it so - drawing it out over the course of hundreds of pages, awful yet irresistible. This book is no different. She definitely has a gift for creating characters whose emotions are so engaging, so vivid, that I am invested in their well being.

Wow, Ms. Penny hit it out of the park.Instead of getting stuck in Three Pines (like Cabet Cove), the good inspector is off and running in this lovely "cozy". Set in a monastery on an island in the big woods, where just like Eden, serpents abound. A monk dead, fractions split the brothers into battling groups, a very sad development in a sect devoted to prayer and singing. Mr Cosham give life and lyrics to our favorite characters. Suspend disbelief and enjoy the sun, cool shade and blueberries.

I am a great fan of the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny. "The Beautiful Mystery" is, I think, a not-all-together-successful attempt to move the story along while touching on a different aspect of the French Canadian culture that has been so well presented in the books.

The setting and premise of the basic mystery here are quite intriguing. Murder takes Gamache and his associate to a secluded monastery on a remote island in Quebec. It's a place never visited by outsiders, and the residents have a tradition of silence except for the "beautiful mystery" of their simple yet glorious plainsong chant.

So far, so good. The basic story of this murder is intriguing and interesting, but the problem comes with pulling in the ongoing mystery in Gamache's past. This has been a part of the series' storyline that has always seemed weakest to me -- the conspiracy theory/police corruption incident that has made Gamache something of a saint and a martyr. Penny's attempt to intertwine these two story lines is sometimes quite contrived.

I missed the plots and characters of Three Pines, and hope Penny's next book will go back there! Meanwhile, I think all real fans of the series will want to read "The Beautiful Mystery." But don't start the series here -- it assumes a good bit of knowledge about Inspector Gamache's backstory.

One more picky little thing for those of you who, like me, ask for attention to detail. The music which opens and closes this recording may be nice religious music, but it is not the all-male Gregorian-style chant described in the book.

What made the experience of listening to The Beautiful Mystery the most enjoyable?

The unique setting; the use of more humor than usual by the author but always in the right setting and which never takes away from the drama of the story itself; the well-defined characters and the interplay that occurs between them; and, as always in a Louise Penny novel but especially in this one, the feeling of evil wending its way throughout the story, maybe just around the next corner, but never where you expected to find it.

Who was your favorite character and why?

There were several great characters, as usual in a Louise Penny mystery, but in the end it was Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. His powerfulness of character, his intellect, and even his frailness are front and center in this novel.

What about Ralph Cosham’s performance did you like?

His performance never takes over the novel, never interrupts it; he is flawless.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I cannot answer this question without giving away part of the plot, but I thought about this story -- am still thinking about this story -- long after I had finished listening to it.

Three Pines, Louise Penny's fictional village outside Montreal and its characters are so dear to me. I missed them! The research that went into The Beautiful Mystery was amazing, but I was almost glad when the book ended.

I have listened to it now 3 times. As with all Louise Penny novels, I am transported to a faraway place while losing myself in a beautiful story centered on colorful characters.

What did you like best about this story?

The background of Gregorian chants, the monastery and the beauty of the forest while being engrossed in the interplay of characters

What does Ralph Cosham bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He is the perfect narrator for her books. His voice is soothing and brings an authenticity to the characters and storyline. I read all of her books but really love the audio editions due to his voice quality.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes. Both my friends and I who listened to it were totally unprepared for the ending and are eagerly awaiting another of her novels

Any additional comments?

In every Louise Penny novel, I find such profound life lessons embedded into the dialogue. . Louise Penny has such a gift and with each recording I am transported into her little village with the characters I feel I know. Oh, how i wish I could visit and live in such a place.

Yes, it's a murder mystery, but as with all of the previous Chief Inspector Gamache novels, there is a certain peace that you feel while reading this book. It takes place in an isolated monastery that is accessible only by boat or float plane among a group of monks who have taken a vow of silence - except for their Gregorian-style chants. The pacing is perfect and as the investigation takes place, both the Chief Inspector and Jean-Guy Beauvoir are still dealing with the not only the machinations of the Surete but also the physical and emotional aftermath of a previous raid in which they were both injured.

This book is a lovely 'read' - the narration is perfect - a very good mystery (it took me right until the end to even get a clue!), and a wonderful way to spend some leisure time. I DID miss Three Pines and the people there, but I am hopeful that we will get to "see" them all again soon.

This story does not take place in Three Pines but deep in the secluded woods of Quebec in the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. The novel covers only a few days and is confined almost exclusively to the monastery. The real villain here is not the murderer but Gamache's boss who ranks high among the evil characters of English fiction. The strong relationship between Jean-Guy and Gamache is tested and the Chief Inspector's patience and real love for Jean-Guy are evident.I enjoy the "Three Pines" novels but I also welcomed the break to a different world. One warning - this may not be a good place to start reading Louise Penny. Her continual references to the gun battle (see "Bury the Dead") may be confusing especially in an audio book if you do not know the whole story.Finally I hope Ralph Cosham continues to narrate Louise Penny's books. He does a terrific job.Now I can't wait for the sequel to this story. There must be one!